The Gay liberation movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s urged lesbians and gay men to "come out", publicly revealing their sexuality to family, friends and colleagues as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride. Coming out and Pride parades have remained an important part of modern LGBT movements, and the visibility of lesbian and gay communities has continued to grow. The movement involved the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.

The phrase gay liberation is somewhat synonymous with the contemporary gay rights movement and broader LGBT social movements, but following the academic use, this article is about movements of a particular historical period that shared similar goals and strategies. Specifically, the word 'gay' was preferred to previous designations such as homosexual or homophile; some saw 'gay' as a rejection of the false dichotomy heterosexual/homosexual.

Gay lib is also known for its links to the counterculture of the time, and for the Gay liberationists' intent to transform fundamental institutions of society such as gender and the family. In order to achieve such liberation, consciousness raising and direct action were employed. By the late 1970s, the radicalism of Gay liberation was eclipsed by a return to a more formal movement that espoused gay and lesbian civil rights.

Matt McGinn (17 January 1928 – 5 January 1977) was a Scottish folk singer-songwriter and poet.

Matthew McGinn was born in Ross Street at the corner of the Gallowgate in Calton, Glasgow in 1928, one of a family of nine. At the age of 12 he was sent to an approved school for two years. On his release he worked in the Hillington factory of GKN, spending his spare time at evening classes and reading. He gained a Trade Union scholarship to study economics and political science at Ruskin College in Oxford when he was 31. After graduating, he trained to become a teacher at Huddersfield Teachers' Training College and went on to work as a teacher in Lanarkshire for three years before becoming the organiser of the Gorbals Adventure Playground.

McGinn joined the folk scene after winning a song contest with a song entitled "The Foreman O'Rourke". He met Pete Seeger in 1961 when Seeger was touring the British Isles. Seeger championed McGinn's music in the United States and arranged for McGinn to be part of a concert performance at Carnegie Hall, where McGinn met a young Bob Dylan. His career in music began during the folk revival of the 1960s but whilst others leaned towards traditional song, McGinn carved his own niche as a humourist and playwright as well as a singer/songwriter. He was a prolific songwriter, drawing on his experiences of Glasgow life for much of his material. He passionately believed in the overthrow of capitalism and supported many union disputes and always sided with the oppressed and down-trodden. His performances in clubs and concert halls were hugely popular. One song, "Coorie Doon," a lullaby for a miner's child, was frequently performed by The Corries & Luke Kelly

Wendell Berry (born August 5, 1934 Henry County, Kentucky) is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is also an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012.

Berry is the first of four children born to John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and tobacco farmer in Henry County, and Virginia Erdman Berry. The families of both of his parents have farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. Berry attended secondary school at Millersburg Military Institute, then earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of Kentucky, where in 1956 he met another Kentucky writer-to-be, Gurney Norman. In 1957, he completed his M.A. and married Tanya Amyx. In 1958, he attended Stanford University's creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, studying under Stegner in a seminar that included Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Ken Kesey. Berry's first novel, Nathan Coulter, was published in April 1960. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship took Berry and his family to Italy and France in 1961, where he came to know Wallace Fowlie, critic and translator of French literature. From 1962 to 1964, he taught English at New York University's University College in the Bronx. In 1964, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky, from which he resigned in 1977. During this time in Lexington, he came to know author Guy Davenport, as well as author Thomas Merton and photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

Bradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. He was charged over the following months with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Assigned as an intelligence analyst in October 2009 to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning was given access to several databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material, much of it published between April and November 2010, included videos of a 2007 helicopter gun attack in Baghdad and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.